Export mappings

Field alignment

Generating the gateway schema from the iBase schema results in a pair of schemas that are highly compatible with each other. Most fields are then populated automatically. However, there are occasions when you might need to provide a custom mapping, especially if the value types are significantly different.

Note: You cannot create a mapping for a link that has no properties.

You can type custom mappings directly into the multi-line text area. Each line represents a different mapping, in the following format:

[iBase field]=[i2 Analyze property]

Each entry takes the form [Entity/Link Type Name].[Field/Property Name]. For example:

Person.FirstName=Person.FirstName
Person.MiddleInitial=Person.MiddleName
Person.LastName=Person.LastName
Person.DOB=Person.YearOfBirth
Location.Latitude=Location.Coordinates,1
Location.Longitude=Location.Coordinates,2

In the entries for the Location type, the comma tells the plug-in how to process comma-separated i2 Analyze property values (such as coordinates). The number indicates the position of each parsed value - for example, 1 for before the comma and 2 for after it.

Note: For a gateway schema that was generated from the iBase schema, mappings such as the first three in the above example take place automatically and you do not need to specify them in the Mappings area. Similarly, comma-separated values are mapped directly to the iBase schema.

Discriminator fields

You can use the same multi-line text area to override iBase's definition of the discriminator fields for a particular item type. For example, imagine that iBase defines the discriminators of its Person type as FirstName, LastName, and SSN.

If you know that a connector returns Person records that never have social security numbers, but you want to require that exported records must have first and last name values, then you can do this:

*Person.FirstName=Person.FirstName
*Person.LastName=Person.LastName

When you mark an entry with an asterisk, you specify that you want to use the iBase field as one of the discriminators for that type, instead of the discriminators that iBase defined.